


You Belong (To Me)

by KingFarbauti



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Angst, FAHC, Fake AH Crew, GTA AU, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 06:07:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13541340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingFarbauti/pseuds/KingFarbauti
Summary: No one could really say what exactly they had been doing, on the day that Jeremy Dooley up and disappeared.





	You Belong (To Me)

No one could really say what exactly they had been doing, on the day that Jeremy Dooley up and disappeared.

It was a sad, quiet testament to just how mundane the day had been. They all felt guilty for it - after all, that’s what you were supposed to do, right? When an important aspect was ripped violently out of your life. Remember every agonizing detail? They always mentioned it in movies, and books, and television; the protagonists able to recall, with stunning clarity, every single second that occurred.

None of them could. In fact, they hadn’t even noticed something was amiss until a few days had passed, which only served to worsen the guilt.

They tried to ease their personal sufferings with excuses; their jobs as criminals often took them on heists that could span days, or even weeks in worse scenarios. Occasionally, they would be forced to travel far out of the city. Rarely, they simply wanted space from each other.

Surely, it had just been another one of those instances?

But it hadn’t.

Jeremy Dooley had disappeared without a solitary trace.

He left the penthouse on a sunny afternoon, with an equally sunny ‘ _goodbye_ ’ that in no way felt finite. In fact, Michael could vaguely recall hearing something to the effect of ‘ _I’ll see you bitches later,_ ’ with a teasingly flamboyant lilt, above the thrum of whatever mind-numbing game Michael had been absorbed in. With Geoff reading quietly beside him, who recalled nothing beyond the pages of his book.

The rest of the Fake AH Crew had been out, or equally absorbed in their own hobbies. It had been just another day. How were they supposed to notice? How were they supposed to know?

To the day, no one can quite figure out if Jeremy fell victim to some ill fate, or whether he simply got tired of the criminal mastermind lifestyle, and left Los Santos far behind. They could hardly blame him, if the latter had been his choice, though the sting of abandonment was tough to stomach.

Matt and Gavin scoured through security cameras lining the streets, starting with those nearest to the penthouse. They saw Jeremy leaving, foregoing a car to enjoy the weather fully as he took a cheerful stroll down the bustling streets. The neon purple and orange hair was easy enough to track through the crowds.

The Crew fully expected some armored van, or a group of masked thugs. Some villain to put a name to, who would surely jump out from seedy hiding spots to drag Jeremy, kicking and screaming, into the unknown. They expected someone to blame.

What they didn’t expect was Jeremy simply vanishing.

Strolling happily across the view of one camera, he should have appeared next in _any_ of the adjacent cameras. But he never appeared, and life carried on undisturbed. The normally flighty civilians gave no indication that anything was amiss, or happening out of the camera’s field of view. And although the, frankly, outdated security cameras did have blind spots, it would have been very difficult for Jeremy to disappear as wholly as he did.

So something had surely happened, right?

They still didn’t know.

A body never turned up - and given that Jeremy was a known member of The Fakes, every news outlet would have been quick to report everything they could on Jeremy’s death. It would have been everywhere, immediately. The LSPD would have likely flown Jeremy’s corpse on a flag pole, held a parade, declared the day a national holiday.

But there was nothing. Nothing to indicate that Jeremy had met his untimely end.

So they began to turn on other crews; interrogating anyone they could get their hands on. It started out aggressive, and ugly: Ryan would be left alone with their unfortunate victim, only to come out, hands bloodied, shaking his head somberly a few minutes later. It ended desperate, and pitiful. Geoff would sit in a comfortable room, practically begging whoever they had taken. For something, anything - any indication that Jeremy still existed.

They were all beginning to wonder.

But none of the other crews had anything to offer them. No one had any idea where Jeremy might be - no one had seen him. The Fakes had been the last, that day.

Their last resort, an invasion of privacy that they had avoided out of respect. On the slight chance that, perhaps, Jeremy really did just leave them all behind. The Crew began tracking all of Jeremy’s electronics, his vehicles, any traceable thing that could possibly be connected to him. All of it came up disfunctional, or abandoned at the penthouse where Jeremy had left it.

There was nothing.

Months passed, and it only seemed harder to suffer the emptiness left behind. Five once more, and poorer for it. It was unfair to say who took it the hardest, they all suffered so greatly, in their own ways.

It wasn’t until Jeremy’s old room became unbearable to live beside that Geoff resolved to do anything about it. “We should clean it out,” he sighed, coarsely, staring at the closed door - but not seeing. His gaze had carried him far away, to a better place, where a distinctive laugh still echoed through the halls. “Pack it all up, put it away somewhere safe. One of the warehouses, maybe.”

The other four breathed a relieved sigh they didn’t know they had been holding - worried, briefly, their boss might suggest destroying all of the personal items. Ridding the world of any trace of Jeremy completely. They wouldn’t have been able to follow through, all of them too sentimental.

All of them were ready to volunteer for the difficult task, but none of them were surprised when Ryan stepped forward first, his stony gaze locked on Geoff. The tired kingpin only nodded, failing to meet Ryan’s eyes, as he turned and shuffled away. He needed a quiet room, and a good book to hide his tears behind.

Michael and Jack were more open with their emotions, wearing their hearts on their respective sleeves: Michael’s fists clenched in a silent fury of heartbreak, and Jack hiding the oncoming tears behind a failingly discreet cough. Gavin was an enigma, as always, but it didn’t take much to see the hurt in his eyes.

They had all shed their tears, openly and behind closed doors. All but Ryan. Reserved as always, no one could even say if the mercenary had cried at all. He spoke less, angered easy, and socialized little. Where once he would have lounged on the sofa, nursing a diet coke, and playing antagonist to see what good-natured chaos he could create between the others - now he withdrew. Off into his room, to tinker with weaponry, or off onto the next job. Always a whirlwind, always keeping busy.

Grief, in his own way, unconventional as it may have been.

But now there was nothing, as he stepped across the doorway threshold, and as the others left him to his thankless task. Nothing but his own thoughts, and Jeremy’s lifeless room. A combination as compatible as gasoline and a lit match. His throat burned, as if it were engulfed in those very flames, as his baby blues scanned over every piece of furniture and personal nick-nack.

None of them had touched this room. None of them had so much as stepped a toe through the door, since the day that Jeremy had disappeared. It felt wrong, intrusive, to enter without permission. They had all done it before, countless times, but it felt wrong now; as though Jeremy was both welcoming them into the space with his former presence, and forbidding them entry with his current absence.

_Schrodinger’s Jeremy._

Ryan realized he had scoffed out loud, the quiet sound jarring him out of his spiraling thoughts. _Better get to work, then._

The blankets on the bed were still disturbed, exactly as Jeremy had left them when he had rolled out of bed that morning. The burning in Ryan’s throat worsened, his hands gripping the cardboard boxes a little too tightly as he set to work on stripping the mattress. Disturbing the nest of blankets sent an invisible cloud of Jeremy’s scent into the air, filling the room with the sniper’s life again.

_Hard to see._

Must have been dust on the blankets. It had been a while. Ryan’s brain quickly delved into the scientific facts of how quickly a layer of dust could settle in a room, without a moving force to keep the dust disturbed on a daily basis. He tuned himself out.

From the bedding, he moved on to Jeremy’s clothes. Pajamas still scattered across the floor from where they had been dropped, and left, when Jeremy had changed that morning. Ryan was acutely aware of how he had coughed to ease the burn in his throat, calloused hands delicately folding and packing away every shirt, jacket, and set of pants.

After the clothing came the trinkets that Jeremy had collected over the years.

Ryan let out a thoughtful hum as he came across a figurine from Bioshock. It had been a shared interest between the two of them. A beloved series they talked frequently about.

‘ _You actually kind of remind me of Booker,_ ’ Jeremy had once told him.

Ryan quirked a curious brow, smiling in amusement. ‘ _Oh yeah?_ ’

‘ _Yeah._ ’ Jeremy grinned. ‘ _I could actually totally see you dressing up as Booker, for a heist._ ’

The idea had entertained Ryan greatly, at the time. He had always meant to surprise Jeremy by following through, but had never quite gotten around to gathering all of the things he needed for the costume. The memory faded, and disappointment rose in its wake. He had meant to do a lot of things, and now he never would.

Ryan decided to keep the figurine for himself, a quiet reminder not to squander anymore opportunities.

“See the pyramids along the Nile,” Ryan wasn’t even aware he was speaking, until he had already started; Bioshock still heavy on his brain, and the sorrow of Jeremy’s disappearance still heavy on his heart. “Watch the sunrise from a tropic isle. Just remember, darling, all the while...”

Perhaps Jeremy simply had left them all behind to escape this life. To find peace, and normalcy, somewhere far away from here. Someplace, where the cops weren’t more crooked than a corkscrew, where being a criminal wasn’t a legitimate career, and where murder wasn’t simply ‘part of the job.’

Someplace better. Jeremy deserved better.

Ryan only hoped that Jeremy had a nice view, overlooking some picturesque landscape. Something that Bob Ross would have envied, or created. He grimaced at his own mental attempt at humor, which no one else could hear.

_Leave the jokes to Jeremy. He was always better at them._

Right.

Focusing back on the task at hand, Ryan continued to put away all of Jeremy’s possessions, one-by-one. Occasionally stopping to admire something in Jeremy’s collection of clutter, or to stare for too long at photographs of Jeremy with various members of the Crew. He pocketed some of those things, quietly, such as the purple and orange throwing knives that Ryan had gifted to Jeremy.

‘ _They’re your colors!_ ’ He had offered, brightly, extending the colorful weapons with a broad smile.

The two had come in a box set of knives, each one a color of the rainbow, which had been gifted to Ryan for his birthday. It hadn’t bothered him to part with a few and render the set incomplete. Especially not when it made Jeremy so delighted.

It was getting harder and harder to put Jeremy’s things away into boxes, Ryan realized.

The effort of lowering each thing into their effective cardboard coffins made his chest burn, and his arms ache. He had dawdled too long, spent too much time admiring Jeremy’s things. He had let the emotion creep in, after spending so long keeping it shut out.

He refused to acknowledge, or admit, that he had been crying since the moment he looked at the bed.

“See the marketplace in old Algiers. Send me photographs, and souvenirs. Just remember when a dream appears.” Ryan’s voice, despite the tears, remained calm and even. Not a crack, or a hitch of breath, or a sob. There was nothing, but the tears and his words, to indicate that he was even upset to begin with.

Thick globs of liquid ran down his cheeks in scalding hot streams, but his face never once contorted or twisted into a product of grief. It was relaxed, and stoic. As emotionless as the iconic latex skull mask he often wore.

“And I’ll be so alone, without you. Maybe you’ll be lonesome too, and blue...” It was a sad thing to wish, but Ryan hoped that Jeremy would be. Quietly, and guilty, praying that Jeremy missed him just as much as he missed Jeremy, wherever the sniper may have ended up.

_Wherever he may have ended._

The intrusive thought caused Ryan’s knees to buckle, unexpectedly. They would be bruised by tomorrow, by the way he fell directly onto them, kneeling beside the box of Jeremy’s clothes like a man in prayer. Shakily, his hands reached back into the box to pull out a black hoodie that Jeremy often wore. It was stylish, and suited him very well.

Across the chest was an iron-on patch that Jeremy and Ryan had created together: an emblem for their team name, the Battle Buddies.

It had started as a joke, and quickly became a deep endearment between the two.

Ryan clenched his hands tightly around the fabric, bringing the jacket up to press his face into the material, hiding the way his expression twisted into agony, then. To muffle the way he began to openly weep out the words that held so much unintended meaning.

“Fly the ocean, in a silver plane. See the jungle... when it’s wet with rain. Just remember… _till you’re home again_ … you belong to me.”

**Author's Note:**

> on November 1st, 2017 my beloved pet boa constrictor, Jormungand, was put to sleep - after a valiant battle against the horrific Inclusion Body Disease, of which there is no cure.
> 
> she was my best friend, and my most trusted companion, and i miss her dearly every day.
> 
> recently i was clearing off the top of her terrarium, and had the heartbreaking realization that everything inside was exactly as it had been left, the day that i took her into the vet's office. it was a very difficult moment for me, and so i decided to turn to writing as my coping method, as it's always helped me in the past - to write out my feelings and experiences, through the eyes of a fictional person.
> 
> so this short little story is my way of coping with the loss.  
> that depressing little insight aside, i hope you enjoy it.
> 
> For Jormungand.


End file.
